Oatmeal Studios pleads: We’re the little guy, had to sue The Oatmeal

The real Oatmeal: an innocent rabbit, whose legacy must be defended.

The usually talkative creator of The Oatmeal webcomic, Matthew Inman, hasn't had much to say about the new trademark lawsuit filed against him. But the Massachusetts company behind the suit, Oatmeal Studios, did respond. And not with a picture of bearadactyls, or women romancing Kodiak bears, either—they did it with an old-fashioned press release.

Oatmeal Studios explained that they are just defending their space in the very competitive industry of greeting cards. While many of The Oatmeal's fans likely see him as a small business, Oatmeal Studios noted he has teamed up with Papyrus-Recycled Greetings, a large greeting card company which is part of an even larger company, American Greetings. (Papyrus-Recycled is a co-defendant in the suit, along with Inman.)

Here's the full statement, from Joseph Gallagher of Oatmeal Studios:

We are a small New England Greeting Card company, founded 35 years ago in Vermont by a woman who loved to design cards and her husband. Oatmeal was the name of their pet rabbit. Over the years they steadily built the business through hard work, and today we have over 2100 outlets nationally, including many small local stores as well as bigger chains.

The Greeting Card industry is very competitive. We were alarmed to hear recently that one competitor, a large greeting card and gift company (and part of one of the world’s largest publicly traded Greeting Card companies), announced the introduction of a new line of cards, "The Oatmeal", to be sold nationally to many of the same customers we serve. They clearly have infringed on the rights that our original founders worked so hard to create decades ago. So, we sent a cease and desist letter and filed a complaint to address this issue. This large company has known about Oatmeal Studios® and competed against us for years, and we are simply trying to protect our name and defend our rights.

We followed up with additional questions for Oatmeal Studios but haven't heard back. We also haven't received any comment at all from Matthew Inman, despite reaching out several times. Inman did make a post about the case on The Oatmeal's Facebook page: a simple link back to Ars coverage, with no additional commentary.

His fans were happy to fill in for him, though. Some saw a clear difference between this case and the case against FunnyJunk, in which Internet supporters eagerly rallied to the defense of The Oatmeal. "Unlike FunnyJunk who greedily tried to abuse the legal system to get money, Oatmeal Studios actually has a legitimate case," commented Michael Morales.

Most commenters were supportive though: "This sucks for The Oatmeal. Dude cannot get a break," wrote Kimberly Meyer. "There is no way in h@des that anyone shopping for cards specifically from Oatmeal Studios would confuse them with the humorous cards of The Oatmeal."

Commenter Jack Arsenault quipped: "If you settled it with a knife fight, one of you could become Steel Cut Oatmeal."

86 Reader Comments

Edit: Nevermind. These companies really are named very similarly and it gets very confusing, lol.

(Re-edit: I had originally thought the article had gotten a name wrong, by saying The Oatmeal was working with the American Greetings company, but they actually were, but my edit was within the time-frame that Ars doesn't list the edit time for typo correction.)

This isn't "Funky"Junk playing lawyerball. I'm actually interested in how it turns out. Of course, the court of public opinion has no say in how the law will handle it, but I personally hope they can mediate an agreement between each other. I doubt anyone went into this maliciously.

Matt should just change his card offerings from Oatmeal to Cards by Matt or something. Nobody will care, since you'd still be able to link to them directly from his website, and a separate card website cardsbymatt.com or something could link directly back to Oatmeal.

I'm sure this one can be hashed out without too much of a fuss. Considering Oatmeal Studios is going to the source and not the one with the biggest bankroll, I have a feeling they're just trying to protect their name more than cash in on it. That's more than likely why neither side is making a big deal about it. They're probably trying to work it out in the background.

Here's to hoping that it can be resolve before hitting any courtroom (as most legitimate cases tend to be it seems). Also kudos to the webcomic for, what I think, is the right way to handle the matter in the public sense so far.

I really like The Oatmeal and Inman, but Oatmeal Studios seems to be right here and I hope he concedes to that. The things some of his fans say are just appalling though, worst one I saw on that Facebook page:

Quote:

I hope the asshole who decided to sue you gets cancer on Thanksgiving Day & their entire family cries about it over the dinner table. Seriously. Fuck this shit.

Although that one might just try to be edgy and use a lot of hyperboles, like The Oatmeal's style of humor, but missing the entire point of what it takes to be funny and that might just be even worse than the hate speak.

Papyrus / Recycled Greetings is actually a co-defendant. I made that clear in the first article and should have been more clear in this one. Will edit to make that clear. Thanks.

That makes a little more sense.

Money grab or no, Inman's use of "Oatmeal" hardly seems like a problem so long as he's not making greeting cards. So my question was in earnest - why sue Inman, when its the greeting card producer who's effectively the source of the conflict? I knew Papyrus/recycled was making the cards, but not that they were also named in the suit.

Anyway, seems like there should be a way for everyone to be satisfied here. Not sure a lawsuit is necessary, but maybe it'll lead to a reasonable settlement.

Yeah, this sounds like one of those stories you hear every now and then about a company suing another company with actual legal basis to justify it.

yeah like actually owning a patent or a design trade dress

Actually no. This is the problem with patents at the moment, or more accurately the people that own them. Patents were never designed to be used as a means to sue people.Owning a VALID patent means you can protect your IP from use by competitors, but since the USPTO will grant a patent for pretty much anything, such as rectangles with rounded corners, patents can't really be considered valid until proven in court.So that leaves us with 2 types of patent owners. Those with rubbish patents that want to sue everyone for huge damahes but don't want to actually goto court because their patent will be invalidated(trolls), and those who own valid patents that want to sue everyone that could maybe possibly on the offchance be infringing their patents, to give themselves an unfair commercial advantage or get huge wads of cash(Apple, Samsung etc, also trolls as they use them strategically to cause harm to competitors rather than protect their IP)

Papyrus / Recycled Greetings is actually a co-defendant. I made that clear in the first article and should have been more clear in this one. Will edit to make that clear. Thanks.

That makes a little more sense.

Money grab or no, Inman's use of "Oatmeal" hardly seems like a problem so long as he's not making greeting cards. So my question was in earnest - why sue Inman, when its the greeting card producer who's effectively the source of the conflict? I knew Papyrus/recycled was making the cards, but not that they were also named in the suit.

Anyway, seems like there should be a way for everyone to be satisfied here. Not sure a lawsuit is necessary, but maybe it'll lead to a reasonable settlement.

I also agree the suit should be against American Greetings, not targeted on The Oatmeal. Matt is one guy, not a multi-million (billion?) dollar company. He merely provides the cartoons to be printed on the cards.

Maybe I'm making too many leaps. I'd like to think it's obvious enough who owns what. But there's this process known as "licensing" by which one company makes a product using a trademark owned by another company.

It's no mental feat to conclude that Inman doesn't actually make cards, and that he is not an express or de facto card producer, but that instead he's made a deal with someone who -is- a card producer in order to market cards using his IP.

Still with me?

And so, therefore, Inman not being a card producer means he's as safe as Quaker Oats when using "The Oatmeal" in his trade. Only because there's cards with his name on them, can Oatmeal Studios make a claim. Or is that too narrow a distinction to understand?

This has happened before, notably when Apple Computer agreed with Apple Records that the names were not in conflict, so long as Apple Computer stayed out of the music business. When Apple Computer ended up going into the music business, a conflict emerged again.

The difference between the Apple case and this one is, Inman is still not in the card business. A card manufacturer is using his name. But to me, that would mean the card manufacturer is in conflict with Oatmeal Studios, not Inman.

Now, I might be wrong, and I might well be an ass, but I'm not being deliberately obtuse, and I don't need help about who owns which Oatmeal. I do think this is a matter between two card producers, and Inman is somewhat regrettably caught in the middle. I can't imagine why this is such an incomprehensible distinction.

Somehow this reminds me of the Apple Corps (the Beatles' label) vs. Apple Computer (because of their iTunes product). Both companies had similar intentions - selling music - but nobody with half a working brain would confuse one with the other. Instead of litigation, why can't they share links so visitors of one company can find the other one, in case they landed on the wrong page? Is fighting in the courts the only way to settle things these days?